Sunday, January 25, 2009

Disappointingly misleading.

I just received an email entitled "Information from CTU."

Imagine my chagrin when it turned out to be from Colorado Technical University.

Maybe next time, Jack.

Friday, January 23, 2009

It's raining!

So even though I know that I won't be as excited when I have to drive on the resulting icy roads tomorrow morning, I just have to say that I love the fact that I have been able to listen to rain all night long.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Fading out.

Anyone who knows me knows that I chronically have too much on my plate, although I usually manage to keep it all under control. And that's fine. Keeping myself involved with things is good, and I usually enjoy it.

But sometimes it's too much. Sometimes I just can't handle it all, or even any of it. Sometimes I just need to fade into the background and let it all be too much until I figure myself out again.

And I've decided that that's fine, too.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Awkward transition phase.

What's with the phony accent? Nobody talks like that!

So I just saw a movie trailer on TV for Revolutionary Road, and the voice-over announcer guy pronounced it "RevolutioNAHRy."

I guess they're still in the awkward transition phase of trying to find a go-to announcer guy after Don LaFontaine's death. Which is going to be hard, and I'll try to cut them some slack. (After all, it's got to be hard to find a replacement for a guy who, in Shallow Man's words, "sounds manly enough to have been a character in The Godfather.")

But seriously. RevolutioNAHRy?

I hope they find a satisfactory replacement soon and this guy's just some sort of temp.

Oh, and 15 points to whoever can correctly identify the opening quote.

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Mixed blessings

I'd been watching the upcoming new year and subsequent Primary changeover with some trepidation. We teach the 6- and 7-year olds, which in 2008 meant that we had three boys in our class. Even though we had some adventures with those three (one in particular, who is the bishop's son and at one point threatened to have us "fired") by the end of the year everything was going great. And every Sunday during the opening exercises and Sharing Time we would watch the class in front of us, the 5- and 6-year-olds, and I would try not to think about how we would be inheriting that class. It's not that the kids are really bad or anything (with one major exception), but the fact that there were ten of them was not comforting at all. That's a five-to-one ratio; I didn't like the odds.

So you can imagine my relief when the Primary president (who is laboring under the false impression that I'm pregnant--I'm not, folks, but it is kind of funny*) informed us that they would be splitting our new class into two smaller sections, probably in the interest of giving the teachers better odds. And I was even more excited when I found out that the above-mentioned major exception was not in our section.

But then came the bad news. This year there are enough incoming Sunbeams to fill up four, count 'em, FOUR classes. Which means that the Primary room is no longer big enough to hold the entire Primary. This means that for the rest of the year opening exercises are being held in the chapel, and Junior Primary moves to the Primary room when Senior Primary is dismissed into individual classes. Generally, the 6- and 7-year-olds are the oldest class in Junior Primary. But with the sudden influx of Sunbeams, the Primary room can't even hold all of Junior Primary. So our class got moved into Senior Primary. Which could be a good thing: one of the reasons we had problems with the bishop's son is that he thought he was too old to be in Junior Primary with the babies (the age difference between 3-year-old Sunbeams and 7-year-old bishops' sons is much vaster than it seems on paper), so moving the 7-year-olds up a notch would probably keep them from revolting too much. However, in Senior Primary they don't sing wiggle songs. This may be helpful for the dignity of 7-year-olds, but certain 20-somethings need to get up and move around from time to time. I don't know if I can sit still for such an extended period of time. It's going to be a long, long year.

Please join with me now, in remembrance of our dear, departed wiggle song time:

I'm all made of hinges 'cause everything bends...





*It's also not completely irrational, though. The policy in this ward seems to be that Primary is where they send the childless couples in order to convince them to have children. You'd think this wouldn't necessarily be the best policy, as after watching the now-more-than-70-Primary-age-children in operation would probably scare anyone out of having kids, but it actually does work. Because the only ways I've ever seen any couple released from teaching Primary was for them to either 1) move out of the ward or 2) have a baby. And after enough weeks of being confined with the 70+ small crazy kids, a lot of people seem willing to take whatever measures necessary to escape. We have currently been teaching Primary for about 17 months, so from a leadership perspective we're probably ready to jump ship as soon as possible.